Zhuyang Liu
Sound Artist | Guzheng musician | Multimedia Artist | Music Producer/ Composer
Zhuyang Liu is a London-based mutimedia artist, award-winning guzheng virtuoso, and researcher whose practice pushes the boundaries of Chinese instruments, experimental sound, contemporary art, and free improvisation.
Rooted in the traditions of asian soundscape, they explore new pathways between Eastern cultural heritage and contemporary artistic languages within a global context. By integrating the guzheng and various Asian traditional instruments with sound installations, electronic music, theatrical structures, and spatial audio environments, they develop a distinctive sonic system and compositional methodology. Through the deconstruction and recomposition of language, instrumentation, and acoustic structures, Liu reinterprets Eastern musical traditions through an avant-garde lens, proposing new paradigms of listening within international contemporary art.
Zhuyang's projects often invite audiences to inhabit complex sonic environments where participation becomes integral to the composition. Characterized by a blend of dark humor and absurdity, their works superimpose everyday urban life with speculative or transgressive fictional worlds. Their immersive situations, often featuring hybrid creatures and rich sound textures, spark conversations around existence, the body, and the anatomy of political and social systems. Described by media as a “sonic acrobat,” Liu continues to expand the possibilities of Chinese music within the global experimental landscape.
Liu was immersed in the northern tradition of the guzheng from a young age under the tutelage of Zhou Xin (China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra), descending from the lineage of grandmasters Zhou Wang and Cao Zheng. In 2013, they won the Gold Medal at the China–Japan–Korea International Guzheng Competition. Their expertise extends to the Sanxian, Komungo, Koto, Gayageum, and various Vietnamese plucked instruments. In their sound experiments, elements of Chinese opera, folk songs, and Eastern folklore interweave with electronic improvisation and field recordings to create a distinctive intercultural sonic language. Widely recognised as one of China's leading young guzheng virtuosos, Liu bridges centuries of musical tradition with contemporary sound art and experimental performance.
Their work has been presented at prestigious institutions including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Notably, they became the first Chinese musician to present a guzheng-centered free improvisation performance at the renowned experimental venue Cafe OTO. Their performances and exhibitions have spanned Chili Gallery (Solo), Hundred Years Gallery, Pushkin House, JZ Jazz Club Hangzhou, and numerous experimental festivals across Europe and Asia. They have also served as a guest artist at Goldsmiths, University of London, delivering workshops on creative sonic methodologies & Chinese traditional music instruments.
Zhuyang's trio album Moving Mountains and Filling Seas (移山造海) was featured by The Wire and received further coverage from SuperELLE China and CLOT. In 2025, Liu was selected by the Italian magazine So What as one of its Best of 2025artists. They have collaborated and performed with internationally acclaimed musicians including Hiromichi Sakamoto, Tim Hodgkinson, Atsuko Kamura, Maggie Nicols, Shabaka Hutchings, and Moor Mother, and have engaged in musical exchange with Grammy Award-winning artist Jacob Collier. Zhuyang's collaborative project have been mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Alan Silverman. Following the release of Water Dragon Temple (Guzheng & Flutes) in 2023, Liu released their new album, Fire Serpent, in 2026 to widespread critical acclaim.
(For details of Zhuyang's CD releases and discography, please see the CD / Releases section in the navigation bar.)
As an researcher. Their writing, The Sonic Arsenal of Alternative Instruments: “Unconventional” Sounds, Noise, and Conflict, examines global instrument structures and sonic ecology. Building upon Steve Goodman’s (2010) Sonic Warfare, their research offers critical, previously overlooked perspectives on the politics of sound. By opening a dialogue on sonic power and institutional structures, their work continues to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable within the musical and auditory domains.
Contact
Artist sound studio based in London, UK
For collaborations and inquiries: liuzhuyang74@gmail.com
or Instagram: @zystudioassistant (artist assistant)
https://zhuyanger.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/@zhuyangliu
https://www.redgoldmusic.com/copy-of-a-priori
Liu Zhuyang is a cross-media artist based in London. She studied under Zhou Xin, a Guzheng master of the China National Radio Chinese Orchestra, and inherited the Chinese Northern Guzheng style. As a young Guzheng performer and composer, she plays the steel-wire Guzheng and the polyphonic Guzheng. She then continued to explore the intangible cultural heritage of the Jing ethnic group's monochord art, the Japanese Guzheng, and other plucked string instruments in the world. She won the gold medal for solo and ensemble performances at the 2013 China-Japan-Korea International Guzheng Competition.
The fusion of cultural backgrounds creates a provocative combination of national insight and contemporary dialogue in Liu Zhuyang's works and vision. You can hear how to listen, national culture, contemporary sound art, and free improvisation. She uses found materials to make unusual instruments, sound-making objects, field recordings, and electronic devices, making extreme performances of reconstructed instruments immersed in a soundscape where electronics and original instruments move in parallel. Zhuyang has been described as "using poetic and crazy language to make sounds full of the world", "the fusion of string instruments and electronic music makes you sober and makes your brain and poop dance together", "please don't let the audience faint in our venues anymore!".
Zhuyang collaborates across fields and disciplines. She has composed and designed sound for numerous acclaimed independent films and stage productions, directed sound for fashion collections, done audio engineering and recording for AAA video games, and designed acoustic systems and sound environments. She was the video producer for the album Music in the realm of Fireflies (which won a World Music Award). Liu Zhuyang makes sounds across fields and disciplines, combining Chinese opera, Peking opera, folk songs, Asian instruments and local field recordings with a contemporary perspective. Her compositions are collected in the CAFA Art Museum
His projects in China and the UK include: experimental trio "Old Three", duo "Epic Life Liger" hybrid project system " ZHUYANGER 撞。Liu Zhuyang's extreme performance of the reconstructed instrument immerses the audience in a romantic game room, while discovering that the fictional story moves parallel in the soundscape. The "absurdity and drama" of the work comes from the mysterious context of the instrument and its unique understanding of the concept of sound - the cause of the sound is challenged by its materiality. Recent performances: British Museum, London/ Hundred years Gallery, Frappant eV gallery, Hamburg/ Staffordshire St, London/ /San Mei Gallery, London / SYSTEM, Shanghai / JZ Jazz club, Hangzhou
Research Writing - "The Sonic Arsenal of Alternative Instruments: Sound, Noise, and the "Unconventional Warfare" of Conflict" builds on Steve Goodman's (2010) "Sonic Warfare" and offers an important and under-represented aspect. The writing opens up a conversation about the power of sound and the politics of sound. This is an area that has always fascinated artists and composers throughout the history of music and sound art, as this discussion constantly pushes the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in the musical or auditory realm.
Zhuyang & Joe Shone - Epic life doggerel verse 2022
When I first got on the Uber, I wasn't gonna talk to the driver . Because I like to look at the shape of people's heads in vehicles. the driver is a bald man, there are too many bald man here he is just normal@ but i’m actually emo because before i left the pub and called the cub i mean the pub beside her place, we only sleep at her’s cuz mine is doggy ..@#$%$$@@%
Written by Zhuyang Liu, Live 2022 improvisation
Zhuyang Liu - Guzheng, Electronic, Vocal
Joe Shone - Piano , Vocal
Recording and mixing Jan 2023
1. I like to observe the shape of people's head in the tube 04:54
3.Human being you just think too much of your LIFE 09:28
LAO SAN YANG '老三样'
An experimental collective of three Chinese independent artists Bianco Li, Corey Lyu, Zhuyang Liu, based in London. During their own art practices, the first musically encounter was a spark of mutual interests and similar cultural backgrounds. Bianco Li has her own practice on jazz, free improvisation and folk singing and was looking for collaboration on stage-based experimental performers. While Corey Lyu talks about his interest of Chinese Opera singing and does his own hand-made costumes for pop ups. Zhuyang Liu is a Guzheng player / string instrumentalist, but sometimes you'll find them bring the retooled instruments, electronics and fictions on the stage like soap operas. The first performance ‘mountain ghost’ took place in Amershan Arms, March 2022. A trio of 30min impromptu performance in conversation through multiple eastern, modified Instruments, alternative vocal experiment, body language and noise.
三位旅居伦敦的中国青年独立艺术家在疫情期间，不约而同地开始思考声音与表演新的表达方式。Bianco、吕博功【皂罗袍】，刘竹洋，歪打正着，在东伦敦一个地下场地，三个人扛着裂了条缝的二手筝、手作的戏服，吕扮上薛湘灵的行头、B带着eBay上五磅淘来的笛子……完成了第一次即兴对话。(‘山鬼’，Amershan Arms，London 2022 Mar. 15th）第二次演出的时候非常紧迫，三人在演出前一天草草写下概念并排练。Bianco在朋友发宣传的时候写道：“明天在别人客厅里演出（实际是个厨房），8点，还是老三样。”这个称呼就这么用着了。（Dangerous kitchen，London，2022 Sep）三人2023年6月7号的专场表演在百年画廊（Hundred Years Gallery）展开，五个不同概念的声音作品，观众默契地挤满空间。被英国当代艺术家Markus Eisenmann评价为“无可挑剔的演出”。
他们把改装乐器、民族乐器、人声实验、肢体、戏剧、合成器和段子带到舞台上，探讨伦理、神话、诗歌、当代生活、民俗、跨媒介表达、自由即兴等等，融合了一些神秘可爱的东西。他们的实验最终揭示了一个事实，我们是否需要‘另一种观看和聆听去接近更本真的样子？’
‘Zhēng Gǔ Dí ’ 2022
‘Guǐ ’, or ‘oni’ (Japanese) in the eastern context is both monsters and gods. Various things have their gods, god of land, of water, of wealth and of poverty. ‘Guǐ ‘ is a vaguer existence, a god without formal position. ‘山鬼’ mountain god, being as the ruler of the mountain, but cannot escape from its duty, its fate of lives and dies with the mountain.
https://bi1anco.bandcamp.com/track/zh-ngg-d
March 15th 2022, performance ‘Mountain Ghost’, Amersham Arms, London.
Live recording:
https://bi1anco.bandcamp.com/album/-
Innovative style of playing presents a soundscape that blurs myth and reality through playing around with the sound pick- up tactics. They bring about the fusion scenes of ethnic and contemporary life under the context of asian culture and their nomadic identities.
'Zh ē ngG ǔ D í ' / mountain ghost, 2022
